Police charge Woodbridge man with shooting wife

WOODBRIDGE -- A woman who ran out of her Colonia house drenched in blood and screaming for help Wednesday was shot in the head by her husband, who then turned the gun on himself, police said today.

“She was, from head to toe, just soaked in blood. Her face was all swollen,” said Joe Lanzone, a neighbor who was first to help Donna M. Bove, after she fled her 48 Amherst Ave. house on Wednesday at 3:55 p.m.

One person called 911, and Lanzone rushed to his house and back with towels to stop the bleeding and cover the woman, who was wearing a bra, he said. It was then that she told neighbors what had happened.

“She told me her husband shot her,” said Lanzone.

The township police department announced today that Pasquale V, Bove was charged with criminal attempted murder, domestic violence and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.

Police responding to reports of shots being fired at the house in the Colonia section of the township found the woman with a bullet wound to the head. Police then found her husband, Pasquale Bove, 43, in an upstairs master bedroom with a single gunshot to his head, authorities said.

Police said they recovered a .357 Colt Python handgun that they found next to Pasquale Bove.

The wife and husband were flown separately to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick where they were listed in critical condition. Pasquale Bove was listed in critical condition today. Donna Bove was moved to University Hospital in Newark and her condition was upgraded to stable condition this morning.

Donna Bove has a 16-year-old daughter, according to several neighbors. The teen was not home at the time of the shooting, but a friend who lives nearby put the girl on the phone with her mother as she was being treated by the Colonia First Aid Squad.

Pasquale Bove has two teenage boys, who neighbors said don’t live in the house and are rarely seen there.

--By Ryan Hutchins and Tom Haydon/The Star-Ledger

Google Maps48 Amherst Avenue, Woodbridge, where the shooting took place.